New Visualizer For Rolling Stones’ ‘Gimme Shelter’ Is Just A Shot Away

A colorfully illustrated and vividly animated new visualizer for the Rolling Stones’ classic “Gimme Shelter” has been unveiled by ABKCO Records. It precedes the new appearance next Friday (28) of the band’s definitive 2002 retrospective Forty Licks, which will become available on vinyl for the first time.

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The compilation gathered together, for the first time, the best-loved hits and key album tracks from the Stones’ 1960s era and their later releases, after the formation of Rolling Stones Records in 1971. Forty Licks was first issued to mark their 40th anniversary and will now make its official vinyl debut as a limited edition 4LP. It will also be available digitally and in Dolby Atmos, with three tracks new to streaming.

The “Gimme Shelter” visualizer depicts many of the lyrical themes in the social commentary song, which was never a single but was part of the vintage Let It Bleed album, released in the last weeks of the 1960s. The song, as Keith Richards later discussed, was written during a time of war and social unrest, and Mick Jagger went on to call it “a kind of end-of-the-world song, really. It’s apocalypse.”

The tension in the recording was heightened by Jagger’s brilliant vocal interplay with American soul and gospel singer Merry Clayton, who went on to release her own version as a single in 1970. The same year, “Gimme Shelter” became the title of the documentary that captured the Stones’ 1969 US tour.

More than 100 covers of the song since have included those by Grand Funk Railroad in 1971, Goo Goo Dolls (1989), a 1993 take by UK modern rock band Cud with vocals by 1960s pop star Sandie Shaw, and a 2007 single B-side by Stereophonics. Earlier this year, it was covered by Eric Church, for the multi-artist album Stoned Cold Country – A 60th Anniversary Tribute to The Rolling Stones.

Pre-order the new editions of Forty Licks.